5.  The applicant was born in 1950 and lives in Chişinău. During the 1990s she became well known in business circles in Moldova and was designated “Business person of the year” in 1999.
6.  During 1999-2001 the applicant borrowed money from four individuals, to a total amount of 894,955 Moldovan lei (MDL), (approximately 79,000 euros (EUR) at the time). She told her creditors that she would use the money to import cosmetic products from a French company to sell in her cosmetics shop in Chişinău. However, she did not repay the money and interest within the time-limits agreed with her creditors. The applicant submitted that she had repaid part of her debt before the proceedings against her were initiated and that the delay in repaying the debt was due to delays in importing the cosmetic products to Moldova. It is not disputed by the parties that the applicant never denied the existence of her debts and that she confirmed them in writing and before the authorities during the criminal proceedings.
7.  Following criminal complaints by the creditors, on 11 November 2002 a criminal investigation was initiated against the applicant. She was accused of obtaining the money fraudulently, without any intention of repaying it. According to the applicant, a person with influence over one of her creditors wanted to obtain a contract with the French company and threatened her with imprisonment if she refused to transfer her business with that company to him. The criminal proceedings against her were used as a means of destroying her business.
8.  On 3 February 2003 the applicant was declared a wanted person and on 4 February 2003 a court remanded her in custody pending trial. Neither the applicant nor her representative was present.
9.  According to the applicant, on 13 March 2003 she was arrested and taken to Chişinău police headquarters, where she was detained throughout that day, without any record of the detention being made. The Government submitted that her detention had been duly recorded. Because she had serious health problems, an ambulance was called and she was taken to hospital at the doctors’ request. The applicant spent seven days in hospital under police supervision. On 20 March 2003 the applicant was released from hospital, was rearrested and placed again in the Chişinău police headquarters. She felt ill on the same day and an ambulance was called to treat her. On 11 April 2003 the applicant’s daughter complained to the Chişinău Prosecutor Office about the alleged refusal to allow the applicant’s transfer to a hospital on 20 March 2003. The applicant did not inform the Court of any reply received or of any complaint to the higher prosecutor or the court in relation to that complaint. She was transferred to prison no. 13 on 28 May 2003.
10.  On 2 April 2003 the investigator sent a rogatory commission to the French authorities, asking them to verify whether the applicant had had contacts with the cosmetics company and whether she had been its representative in Moldova, as well as whether she had purchased cosmetic products from that company in order to import them to Moldova. On 26 July 2004 the applicant requested that “two volumes of materials from France” be added to the file. The prosecutor supported her request, on condition that the materials be translated. The court agreed, but a translation was apparently never added to the file.
11.  The applicant requested that witnesses on her behalf be heard. In particular, on 1 November 2003 she asked for O.G., the son of one of her creditors, to be heard, since he had allegedly received large sums of money from the applicant on account of the debt she owed his mother. Moreover, she was in frequent contact with him, all of which proved, in the applicant’s opinion, that she was not hiding from her creditors but was trying in good faith to honour her obligations. The applicant submitted copies of receipts from her creditors confirming that she had repaid them various sums of money before the criminal proceedings were initiated (for instance, she repaid USD 5,000 on 13 April 2000, USD 300 on 15 January 2001, USD 500 on 15 December 2001 and USD 500 on 15 January 2002; in addition she repaid many smaller amounts to S., one of her creditors, on numerous occasions throughout 2001).
12.  On 27 July 2005 the applicant was convicted and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. The court relied on the statements of various witnesses attesting that the applicant had taken money from them and never returned it, absconding from them. It did not mention anything about the results of the rogatory commission results, but relied on “information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs”, according to which the applicant was not a representative of the French company in Moldova. In her appeal, the applicant noted, inter alia, that she had not been given a translation of the materials obtained from the French authorities. She repeated her request during the hearing of the Chişinău Court of Appeal, adding that the lower court had noted the impossibility of examining those documents in the absence of a translation. She referred to the receipts from her creditor S. as evidence of the fact that they had been in frequent contact throughout 2001 when she repaid him sums of money on account of her debt (see paragraph 11 above). She also noted that on 30 November 2001 she had travelled together with S. to the customs to meet a truck full of merchandise imported from the French company, and that this had been confirmed during the first-instance court hearing. The applicant also declared that she had asked the investigator to summon O.G. as a witness in order to confirm that she had repaid large amounts of money to him as the son of one of her creditors. She further submitted that she had been detained, together with seven others, for more than two years in a small cell measuring 10 square metres, and that the cell was insufficiently lit, ventilated or equipped with elementary necessary items. She also complained that she had been subjected to ill-treatment while in detention, following which she was admitted to hospital with a broken arm. She asked for her health problems to be taken into consideration, as well as the inhuman conditions of detention in which she had been detained for a lengthy period of time.
13.  The Chişinău Court of Appeal scheduled a hearing for 1 December 2005. According to the transcript of that hearing, at the applicant’s lawyer’s request the court agreed to add to the file a recommendation issued by the French company and addressed to the court, according to which the applicant had been the company’s representative in Moldova from 1994-2002 and had been recognised as a serious and responsible business person, whose activity had allowed the French company to expand its business in Moldova. During the hearing of 1 December 2005 the applicant requested “to see the set of documents from France [given that] the first-instance court stated that the documents had not been translated, and therefore had not been examined”. The applicant’s lawyer supported the request, adding that accounting documents from France had been submitted to the first-instance court which confirmed the business relationship between the French cosmetics company and his client, who represented that company in Moldova. According to the transcript, the court refused the request, on the ground that the materials referred to by the applicant had been the subject of examination by the lower court.
14.  Having examined the parties’ submissions, the court upheld the lower court’s judgment, finding that all the arguments raised by the defence had been examined by the lower court and had been properly rejected as unfounded. In respect of the applicant’s argument that she had not had the opportunity to study a translated version of the documents obtained from the French authorities, the court found that this matter had already been examined during the hearing before the first-instance court.
15.  In his appeal on points of law, the applicant’s lawyer noted the lower courts’ refusal to hear witnesses on her behalf; the fact that the courts remained silent about the evidence that she had already repaid an important part of the debt to her creditors, which excluded an intention to evade payment; that the file was not complete, certain of the documents in the file proving her innocence not having been forwarded by the first-instance court to the Court of Appeal; and that two of the four alleged victims had not appeared at the hearing before the Chişinău Court of Appeal, even though she considered their presence mandatory.
16.  The applicant’s lawyer considered that she was being prosecuted for her inability to repay her debts, contrary to Article 1 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention. He also referred to the information from the Customs Department, confirming that on 29 November 2003 the company in which the applicant worked as executive director had imported cosmetic products from the French company, and therefore was pursuing precisely the type of activity for which the applicant had borrowed the money. He also referred to the contract between the French company and the applicant, according to which the latter acted as the exclusive representative of that company in Moldova. He finally referred to awards received by her in 1999-2001, including “Best business person of the year 1999”.
17.  On 28 March 2006 the Supreme Court of Justice upheld the lower courts’ judgments. The court found that the applicant had borrowed large sums of money and then avoided contact with her creditors and refused to repay her debts. She did not deny having borrowed the money, but explained that she had invested the money in the cosmetic products and was not yet able to repay it. Moreover, the applicant presented herself to her creditors as a credible person – the official representative of the French company in Moldova - while in fact she was not such a representative. She thus misrepresented to the victims the nature of the relationship into which they had entered. Even though she had always confirmed in writing her debts owed to the victims, the applicant would avoid meeting them and had no intention of paying.
18.  The judgment of the Supreme Court of Justice was final. An extraordinary appeal by the applicant to the Supreme Court of Justice was dismissed on 18 December 2006.
19.  On 26 March 2009 the applicant was released from prison.
20.  The applicant stated that she had returned some of the money she had borrowed, but was unable to return the remainder because her economic activity had been interrupted by her arrest.
II. RELEVANT REPORTS OF THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE FOR THE PREVENTION OF TORTURE AND INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT
21.  The relevant parts of the report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) on its visit to Moldova between 20 and 30 September 2004 (CPT/Inf (2006) 7) read as follows (unofficial translation): 55.  The situation in the majority of prisons visited, faced with the economic situation in the country, remained difficult and one recounted a number of problems already identified during the visits in 1998 and 2001 in terms of material conditions and detention regimes.
Added to this is the problem of overcrowding, which remains serious. In fact, even if the prisons were not at full capacity – as is the case with prison no. 3, in which the number of detainees was significantly reduced in comparison with that during the last visit of the Committee – they continued to be extremely overcrowded. In fact, the accommodation capacity was still based on an inadequate 2m2 per detainee, which in practice was often even less. 77.  The follow-up visit to Prison no. 3 in Chişinău did not have a satisfactory result. The progress found was in fact minimal and limited to some current repairs. The repair of the ventilation system had been possible primarily through the financial support of civil society (especially NGOs), and the space for daily exercise had been created by the efforts of detainees and their families.
The repair, renovation and maintenance of cells is entirely the responsibility of the detainees themselves and their families, who also pay for the necessary materials. They must also provide their own bed sheets and blankets, the institution being able to give them only used mattresses. 79.  ... In sum, the conditions of life in the great majority of cells in Blocks I-II and in the transit cells continue to be miserable. ...
Finally, despite the drastic reduction in overcrowding, a very high, even intolerable, level of occupancy of the cells can be observed. 83.  Other than in the Lipcani Re-education Colony for Minors, where the efforts made in this respect are to be highlighted, the quantity and quality of detainees’ food everywhere is a source of grave concern. The delegation was inundated with complaints regarding the absence of meat and dairy products. The findings of the delegation regarding both the stocks of food and the menus confirm the credibility of these complaints. Its findings also confirmed that in certain places (in Prison no. 3 and elsewhere), the food served was repulsive and virtually inedible (for instance, insects and vermin were present). This is not surprising, given the general state of the kitchens and the quality of their equipment.
The Moldovan authorities have always claimed financial difficulties in ensuring the adequate feeding of detainees. However, the Committee insists that this is a fundamental requirement of life which must be ensured by the State to those in its charge, and that nothing can exonerate it from this responsibility. ...”
22.  The relevant parts of the report of the CPT on its visit to Moldova between 21 and 25 November 2005 (CPT/Inf (2008) 35) read as follows (unofficial translation): 9.  ... As for financial resources, the basic subsistence needs in the prisons are only partly covered by the State budget: at the level of 33% in respect of food (meat, milk and eggs being obtained from humanitarian projects). ...”
23.  The relevant parts of the report of the CPT on its visit to Moldova between 14 and 24 September 2007 (CPT/Inf (2008) 39) read as follows (unofficial translation): 47.  The CPT can only welcome the above-mentioned measures taken by the Moldovan authorities. Nevertheless, the information gathered by the Committee’s delegation during the 2007 visit shows that much remains to be done. In particular, overcrowding continues to be a problem; despite the fact that all establishments visited were operating well below their official capacity, and there was on average only two square metres of living space per prisoner, rather than the standard of four square metres provided for in Moldovan legislation.
The CPT is convinced that the only viable way to control overcrowding and achieve the standard of at least four square metres of living space per prisoner is to adopt policies designed to limit or moderate the number of people sent to prison. In this connection, the Committee must stress the need for a strategy covering both admission to and release from prison to ensure that imprisonment really is the ultimate remedy. This implies, in the first place, an emphasis on non-custodial measures in the period before the imposition of a sentence and, in the second place, the adoption of measures which facilitate the reintegration into society of individuals who have been deprived of their liberty.
The CPT trusts that the Moldovan authorities will continue their efforts to combat prison overcrowding, and that in so doing they will be guided by Recommendation Rec(99)22 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe concerning prison overcrowding and prison population increases, as well as Recommendation Rec(2003)22 on conditional release (parole).”